


Faith in a Futile Hope

by HathorAroha



Category: Life Is Strange 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Chris Eriksen (mentioned) - Freeform, Gen, Post-Parting Ways Ending (Life is Strange 2), Sean Diaz (mentioned) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:50:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27578749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HathorAroha/pseuds/HathorAroha
Summary: Post Parting Ways ending.Fifteen years after having parted ways at the border, Daniel goes to Mexico to chase the vanishingly small chance that Sean is still in Puerto Lobos, or even in Mexico at all.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	Faith in a Futile Hope

When they take off Daniel’s ankle bracelet shortly after his 21st birthday, naturally, his first instinct is to take off to look for Sean in Mexico—and he would, but he resists.

He’s smart—he knows this is _exactly_ what the government expects him to do—

So he doesn’t.

(The hell it’s hard not to just buy a plane ticket and _go_.)

Instead, he fantasises about the day he reunites again with his brother—he’d find him the moment the plane’s wheels hit tarmac, the moment he exits the terminal, and all would be well again.

(Sean still sends letters to Beaver Creek—all redirected now Daniel’s moved back to Seattle. Shit. What’s worse—Sean clearly refusing to imagine Daniel perished in the 2020 plague, or Daniel never being able to assure him for real?)

He has faith that Sean still loves him—even after Daniel leaving him alone at the border—but where _is_ he? Faith and fantasy alone cannot guarantee him ever finding Sean in Mexico.

(He believes anyway. It’s what keeps his hope alive.)

He can wait another year.

He _can_.

Fuck, it aches to walk past travel agencies or see internet ads boasting cheap holiday plane tickets. He could walk in, or click an ad. Just one step or click and—

And he would cave in, he would book a plane to Mexico on the spot.

And so he doesn’t.

A year passes.

He’s now twenty-two—

And still he resists.

God. It’s torture.

He blocks all travel websites, avoids streets where there are travel agencies. It’s so bad, he’d sooner pass a _church_ that looks eerily like the one in Havenpoint, than trust himself to walk past any travel shop.

Only one envelope from Sean this year—

A drawing—

Of Cassidy and Hannah with a herd of rather adorable-looking llama-like animals behind them. Underneath, Sean had written: “ _Vicu_ _ñas! Warm and fuzzy and stupid adorable.”_

It’s not cold comfort, but nor warm and fuzzy, knowing at least Sean isn’t entirely alone. That at least he can see the old gang from Humboldt County.

Lukewarm. Lukewarm comfort.

He lets the weeks and months plod on by, he buries himself deep into his first year of university.

A degree—he really doesn’t care much for his studies (Cs get degrees, as the saying goes), but at least it keeps him distracted enough from just flying off to Mexico.

And so another year passes.

Twenty-three, he still doesn’t _quite_ let himself go yet—

Maybe they’re still watching and waiting, expectant. But it’s been two years, hasn’t it? If he goes, he might not end up leading them straight to Sean.

But…what if he _did?_

It would be his fault, his doing.

They’d capture Sean, throw him behind bars, probably for life.

All thanks to Daniel.

So he resists, still. The agony is beyond unbearable.

But there’s no way he’s leading the government to Sean—he doesn’t trust them, ankle bracelet or no ankle bracelet.

At least Chris is there to distract him—he’s always there for him. Thank god.

Maybe he’ll go next year, but not this year. It’s too soon, too early.

He wakes up with a start on August 15th—Sean would be thirty now.

Thirty to Daniel’s twenty-three.

He’s never felt so old in his life. He’s _twenty-three_ , and Sean has missed out on being there for all his milestones (so far anyway), for all his teen years.

He would be lying if he said he wasn’t jealous of other people who still had their older brother around. If only he’d never taken Sean for granted.

 _“I took you for granted, and I’m sorry!”_ Those words from so many years ago still haunts him.

Unlike Sean, he can’t say sorry for doing the same too.

If only he knew where Sean was now.

If only.

Another couple of drawings and a little photo from Sean: the drawing of a glorious waterfall catches his eye, and he practically frames it on a wall, it’s _that_ stunning. Underneath is written: _“Angel Falls—the highest waterfall in the world.”_

The other drawing is of a group of adorable little monkeys (“Capuchin monkeys” is written underneath) feeding and resting together. It’s actually quite sweet.

But it hurts all the same. At least Sean’s not wasting his life in a 9-to-5 job that has, amazingly, not yet stolen Daniel’s soul.

It hurts. And he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t a healthy dose of jealousy too.

Still, he waits, biding his time still, waiting for the right moment to go.

And so another year flows on by.

Twenty-four, and he still doesn’t know where Sean is, though he knows he must be alive somewhere.

For Daniel receives a couple of photos and a drawing; the photos both have generic blue skies and tropical greenery in the background, nothing that would identify him as being in any particular country.

The drawing—coloured in this time—is of a couple of yellow flowers; one has a little bee perched on a petal. Underneath are two words: “Ipê-amarelo.”

So where _is he?_

 _Is_ he in Mexico?

How will Daniel find his older brother again?

What plan does he even _have_ beyond “take a plane to Mexico”?

How is he going to do this?

These thoughts stress him so much he gets the old nightmares again.

Of cults, of Lisbeth, of Sean with glass in his eye, of borders and vigilantes who hunted them.

Of being trapped in burning churches, being forced to endure punishment for his “sins”, of being trapped in a prison cell and not knowing where he is.

Chris insists that he has to go to Mexico, if not to give him _some_ peace of mind, to give him _something_ in his search. Surely by now, the government has moved on.

Chris tells Daniel he hates to see him in so much internal torture over going to Mexico or not—and he _must_. It’s not healthy for him to keep forcing himself to stay here in the USA, always wondering, never searching.

Sean would not want him to torture himself like this—

The road is scary, and Daniel is too comfortable in his little corner of the USA to venture outside.

He’s not like Brody, nor his mother, nor his brother—he has little desire to brave it out and travel.

The traumatic journey from Seattle to the border of Mexico all those years ago hadn’t helped matters at all.

But if he stays here, he’ll forever wonder if Sean is in Mexico, or elsewhere.

And so maybe Chris really _is_ right, he really should go to Mexico.

If but for the peace of mind, to let him go on the journey he has to go on. Even if he doesn’t find Sean, at least he’ll know he _tried_.

So he finally caves in. He books a plane for next year—2032.

It is now 2032—he goes in August, books in a holiday for two weeks, the second-to-last day not-so-accidentally coinciding with Sean’s birthday.

Surely, two weeks is enough time to drive around Mexico (he can rent a car and just drive around the place), and somehow run into Sean.

Mexico isn’t a big place, at least not compared to the United States. But Daniel wonders if Sean is even still _in_ Mexico; it’s been fifteen years, he could have gone anywhere.

Surely he’s wandered far from Puerto Lobos by now—maybe he’s just as likely in Canada as he is at the tip of South America, where only the wide cold ocean separated him from Antarctica.

But at least for now he has to believe, has to hope that Sean’s still somewhere in Mexico. It’s a big, big planet, and he doesn’t know if he has enough bravery to go through dozens of foreign countries just to look for his brother.

It was one thing for Sean to look for him in Nevada—at least that was a _place_ , one next door to California—but at least he’d had an idea where Daniel was at the time.

Now? Daniel may as well throw three darts at the world map and pick the first three countries to try to look for him.

Mexico was as good as any place to start—it made sense anyway, seeing as Sean had always wanted to go there.

He could only hope that he wasn’t about to waste two weeks and a few grand only to find no sign of Sean.

He lands at _Aeropuerto Internacional de Ciudad Obregon_ , and it isn’t the most flattering of places, the little town where he ends up staying for a couple days, but at least he’s here in Mexico. The buildings are sparse and plain, and there is little greenery to see, but the sky is as blue here as it is in Arizona across the border. The houses make him think of matchboxes and lighters and little motels huddled away in some isolated corner of Nevada.

If only he could have taken his own car down here, but he couldn’t, so he’d had to rent one for a fixed price per day—at least his office job back in the States paid him enough to be able to afford this. He can’t exactly live _in_ it like he’d seen people do, but it gives him something to work with regardless.

He can’t help the anxiety that overwhelms him as he navigates a language not his own, but a language that was his father’s and his brother’s. Part of him wants to smack his past teenaged self for refusing to ever learn Spanish, after his brother had tried to use him to cross the border. Instead, he had learned French, much to his grandparents’ delight—both had learned French as high-schoolers back in the day, and were more than happy to help him out, even if they were a little rusty.

Now French was next to useless here in Mexico, and Daniel doubts that Sean was in France or in some other nation like Canada where French was one of the main languages.

Ironically, Chris had been the one to learn Spanish—he would’ve been a very useful presence right now.

Nevertheless, at least Daniel is in Mexico, and Puerto Lobos is not far away, Daniel being able to make his way northward, toward the same border Sean had crossed so many years ago.

 _Maybe he’s in Puerto Lobos,_ he hopes, even if some part of him tries to reason that after fifteen years, he might not even be there anymore. _Or…maybe he’s moved somewhere along the coast?_

Mexico was a bigger place than he had realised: perhaps its small size compared to the US had somewhat tricked him. Its border _alone_ touched four states from west to east: California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. It wasn’t exactly a small island nation stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

But no way Daniel was going to give up—and so he made his way up the west coast, the Gulf of California appearing and disappearing from view depending on what road he ended up on. Maybe, just maybe, he would see Sean along the way.

He can’t help but stop for a good part of a day at Punta Chueca, walking barefoot in the warm sand, the sun hot on his shoulders (it was tank top weather), sitting down at midday to have lunch, and then—fuck it—might as well have a swim too. At least he’d brought along swimwear just in case. He ponders the island of Isla Tiburon, which looks so close he imagines he could just swim right across to it. And he wonders if Sean might be on this island too, but he wants to stay on the mainland, keep going up the west coast.

It’s sort of a blessing that the places he passes through are so small, and it shouldn’t be that hard a task to find Sean, _if_ he was still here. And that was a big if.

At least he’s now less than a day’s trip away from Puerto Lobos.

Puerto Lobos greets him with soaking sunshine, lulling bright blue ocean that melts into the cloudless sky, and a tan, sandy beach that seems to go on forever. It is a lot smaller than he expected it to be; somehow, Sean had made it sound like this big, wide world where he could just get lost and never be found again.

Instead, it’s a little village, perched on the coast of Mexico, forever gazing out at Baja California that appears nothing more than a hint of land like damp watercolour smudged across a blue canvas. There is one little hotel here, with just a few rooms and one staff member who does all the things, but Daniel doesn’t mind. At least he can stop here for a day or so, and drive up and down Puerto Lobos to look for Sean.

He doesn’t know why it disappoints him so deeply when he doesn’t find Sean at all—he’d even shown the photo to some people, and they’d all shrugged or shook their heads, not recognising the man with the black glass eye. Did Sean even still have a black glass eye, or had he replaced it with another colour, or even something that more closely resembled his remaining eye?

It doesn’t take long before Puerto Lobos’ width and breadth is exhausted in his search, but Daniel doesn’t let himself give up—yet. He still has another week or so; nevertheless, he spends the self-same night just staring at a map of Mexico, drawing with bold marker how far he’s been now.

It isn’t that impressive. It’s barely even much of the west coast, and this fills him with a sense of something dropping into the pit of his stomach, and he lets his head rest on the map, closing his eyes, feeling he could just fall asleep here from sheer exhaustion and burn out.

 _I can’t possibly search all of Mexico in two weeks…how am I supposed to search the_ world?

He wishes that Sean had at least sent a hidden address to their mom’s P.O. Box, but then he might have forgotten it, or hadn’t wanted anything more to do with Karen. Daniel had asked Jacob through Sarah Lee again and again, but Sean had never sent him an address either.

Nobody, not even their mom, seemed to have an idea where Sean was—not even a cellphone number to call.

It really, really wasn’t helping at all—and he knows now that it would take nothing short of a miracle to find him; if he can’t find him in Puerto Lobos of all places, then where the hell could Daniel look for him?

He doesn’t go any farther north than Puerto Lobos—he doubts that Sean would’ve wanted to be anywhere near the border.

And so Daniel returns to Ciudad Obregon, and he has but a few precious days left to venture southward this time, but with less enthusiasm than before.

He’s not going to find Sean.

He’s never going to find him here—

He could be anywhere in Mexico or the world—if Mexico felt so vast and endless now, how would South America, much less North America and Canada, then feel to Daniel?

_This planet is just…way too big._

The towns south of Ciudad Obregon remind him again of the ones he’d seen farther north, and agriculture dots the landscape everywhere he looks. Daniel is sure Sean would never live in many of the little villages he passes through, but he keeps his eyes out anyway—

And suddenly, it’s time to go home—

He hadn’t even covered the entire west coast of Mexico.

When the 15th August comes around, Daniel has given up the search, and instead chooses to spend his day around Playa Huatabampito.

He wishes he could enjoy the palm trees, the setting sun, the lapping waves, and soft, cooling sand as much as the beachgoers here.

But he cannot, because now it’s all over.

It’s over.

Two weeks.

He had failed to find Sean.

All that money he’d wasted on a childish hope, a fantasy only found in fairy tales and fiction.

Today was Sean’s 32nd, and Daniel had failed to be there to surprise him for his birthday.

What a stupid, foolish man he was, to have fallen for his own naïve hopes and dreams—

The dream he’d find Sean in Mexico was as real as any he ever experienced in sleep. He’d fallen for his own stupid naivety, so gullible to believe and fall for his own convictions.

Of course he wasn’t ever going to find his brother. Mexico was way smaller than the USA, but that didn’t mean he’d find Sean any easier. Fuck. He could be anywhere on the fucking _planet_.

Would Daniel have to search the literal ends of the world for even the tiniest hopes of ever finding Sean? How many years could that take?

Either way—he had failed.

Maybe it would have been better if he’d never tried.

He should give up—there was a reason reunions between long-lost relatives happened only in movies and children’s books. Besides, would they even recognise each other now? He’d forgotten Sean’s _voice_.

Daniel stares out at the watery sun sinking into the distant horizon, drowning in the ocean, helpless. The otherwise soothing rhythm of the lapping waves does nothing to console him. It only hurts, thinking how in another time, in another life, he could’ve been here—or hell, in Puerto Lobos—enjoying the warm Mexican summer with his brother, perhaps even sharing a beer and pizza together.

But no.

He was alone now.

He’ll never see Sean again. Ever.

Daniel fumbles around for the sketchpad and pen he’d been carrying around since he’d landed here in some stupid hope that just having them in his backpack will give him _la suerte_ —the luck—he needs to find Sean.

Placing the sketchpad on his crossed legs, he opens it to a new blank page, settling back against the lone palm tree behind him. He clicks the pen, a stark image of a lone little wolf cub howling at a bright full moon burning in his mind’s eye. After a few false starts, he begins sketching, the ghost of a wolf form emerging on the page. The world around him collapses to the wolf, like it was the only thing in existence, but for the whoosh of lapping waves, the wind striking his bare arms, and the soft warm sand under him.

When he finishes the sketch, he taps his pen on the page, thinking of a title to go with it. After a few seconds it finally comes to him, writing three words under the wolf’s little paws:

 _“The Lone Wolf”_.

He stays very still, staring at the lone wolf cub howling at a cold, uncaring full moon. A drop of water blots the wolf’s front paw. He tears out the page, closing and dumping the sketchbook on the sand next to him.

“I—I wish I knew where you are. But now I know. I’m never gonna find you.” Daniel swipes his hand over his eyes. “You could be anywhere—and—we wouldn’t recognise each other anyway, right? I don’t even remember your _voice_ anymore, Sean. I’m not even sure how to feel about that.”

It’s weirder still to think that the last time Sean had heard _his_ voice, he still had the high lilt unique to a child’s. Or that his face was forever ten years old in his memory.

Daniel had grown into a full adult man, and yet, in Sean’s memories, he’s forever frozen in time as the ten-year-old he’d left behind. Sean had never seen him grow up into teen-hood, never had the chance to tease him when his voice broke, nor joke that he’ll never be as tall as Sean, nor ever make fun of the scant “beard” he managed at _best_. He never even saw him dress up for his first prom, go on his first date, discover his sexuality, or even _graduate_. To his surprise, his high-school graduation had felt bittersweet—yes, his grandparents and even his mother had been there, but…it was still not _right_ for Sean to be absent, to not be there to be proud of him, to see him graduate high school.

Whether prom or graduation, he’d have given _anything_ to have had Sean around.

Now, Daniel had not only robbed himself of having his older brother around, he’d also robbed _Sean_ of watching him grow up into the young man he is today.

God.

It’s—

It’s enough to make him want to scream at the unfairness, to shout _“Why?!”_ at the deaf, mute fates, to make him want to sob until his throat is raw, until his tears dry up and leave him an exhausted, shaken mess.

And so he—

And so he curls up into a ball, pressing his lower back into the tree trunk, pulling his knees up to his chest, burying his face in his arms, only the silent shuddering of his shoulders betraying his state. He feels the paper flutter from between his fingers, but doesn’t care. Let it fly over the sand, roll into the waves, disintegrate in the foam—like he cared.

It didn’t matter anymore.

He’d never, ever see Sean again.

It’s not like he can repeat his teen years over again, so what was the point? He was twenty-five, what more could Sean miss, short of engagement and marriage and graduation from university? 

What even was the point if Sean wouldn’t even see him cross the stage for his undergraduate degree? If Sean would never see him marry the love of his life? If Sean would never see him promoted in some nebulous dream career?

They’d all be tainted with the knowledge he had robbed Sean of seeing him grow up, seeing him succeed in life—

All because of a second of impulse, a moment of panic, of not wanting to hurt anyone else—not even the policemen at the border who would have killed him and Sean without remorse.

And now he knew: he had no choice but to give up.

And now tomorrow…

Tomorrow, he will return to the USA, none the wiser about Sean’s whereabouts in Mexico, let alone the whole world.


End file.
